Wes Craven

A businessman can be as military as any politician.

At this point in my career, 'Scream' is one of the longest running stories I've told. It's fascinating to still have actors who are very much into continuing their roles and have great chemistry.

I learned to take the first job that you have in the business that you want to get into. It doesn't matter what that job is, you get your foot in the door.

My goal is to die in my 90s on the set, say, 'That's a wrap,' after the last shot, fall over dead, and have the grips go out and raise a beer to me.

Hawks is great, 'The Treasure of Sierra Madre,' 'The Big Sleep'... He could do the Salt-of-the-Earth very well. He was a very smooth director; a very good film architect in terms of his storytelling.

It's not an easy place to be - to write a horror film. You go down the stairs to the dark to find these characters. It's not a place anyone can go, and sometimes it's not a place that you want to go.

I've done a few interviews where I realized that 9/11 was the ultimate home invasion, not to be glib about it. You know, where the place that you think is safe and the people that you think are safe and far from evil are suddenly just slaughtered by it, and you have no control over it.

Looking back now, if I went to film school, it probably would have helped knowing what the best of the best of foreign films were, but that wasn't the case. In some ways, I think that led to my originality, because I hadn't seen anybody else.

The 'Scream' series is unique in that it's an ongoing murder mystery, even though it's a different killer, so if you know who that killer is, then half of the fun of the movie is gone.

You want to give the person as much freedom as you can within the boundaries of being a responsible producer with a contract to a studio. It's about giving as much freedom as you can, and the more the filmmaker proves he or she is on the track that you feel good about, then you just kind of watch dailies.

You don't enter the theater and pay your money to be afraid. You enter the theater and pay your money to have the fears that are already in you when you go into a theater dealt with and put into a narrative.

If something comes along that is totally outside of horror, fine, but I find there's an immense amount of freedom within the genre.